Voters urged to reject redistricting

ALBANY >> Advocates urged voters Monday to reject a proposed constitutional amendment to change legislative redistricting, saying it will only make gerrymandering and rigged elections worse.

They handed out mock awards for the most outrageously gerrymandered districts, calling Senate co-leader Jeff Klein’s scattershot 34th district “The Splattered Bug of the Bronx” and the worst in the state.

Assembly member Claudia Tenney’s 101st district, “The Leftover Lightning Bolt,” which takes three hours to drive from end to end, finished second.

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They said Klein’s district was drawn to ensure his re-election, while Tenney’s was drawn as an afterthought by Assembly Democrats to pack unwanted GOP voters into a district that runs from Utica nearly down to Middletown in the Catskills.

Also on the list of bizarrely shaped districts: Sen. Mark Grisanti’s “Buffalo Bender” 60th District, and two on Long Island, the 13th Senate “Lobster Claw” and the 3rd Assembly “Crocodile.”

“There’s nothing like looking at the maps to tell the story,” Blair Horner of New York Public Interest Research Group said. “Words do not describe what we see. The only people that could probably imagine those words would be Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso, the guy of melted clocks in particular.

“What we are looking at is raw political power playing out across the state to rig elections to the advance of incumbents and the political parties that are in power in both houses. Our strong message to New York voters is, this November, can the plan.”

“Don’t be fooled,” added Susan Lerner of Common Cause/NY.

They were sharply critical of Gov. Andrew Cuomo for reneging on a 2010 campaign promise to end partisan gerrymandering. He went along with the Legislature on redistricting in 2012 as well as the constitutional amendment that keeps the process under their control.

Advocates said the proposed amendment fails to provide for an independent commission, with bans on lobbyists and elected officials participating and blocking the Legislature from revising the plan; clear rules to follow; and a ban on any hint of partisanship or incumbency protection in drawing new lines.

The advocates said the process of drawing election district lines has been perverted into a means for incumbents to keep their grip on power, with only 55 state legislators losing elections in New York in the past 30 years.

They said only 29 of the 213 Senate and Assembly districts are within 1 percent of their ideal population size. Senate districts vary by as much as 27,000 residents, and the Assembly by more than 10,000.

“In the Senate, districts based in heavily Democratic New York City are districts with the highest populations,” the groups said in the “Can the Plan” report. “It is likely that this was an effort by the Senate Republicans to have as few districts in New York City as possible. The strategy of having the smallest population districts in upstate New York allowed mapmakers to increase the number of upstate Senate districts, which are most likely to contain Republican majorities.”

Something similar held true for the Democrat-controlled Assembly, they said.

“In the Assembly, the district lines appear to be drawn with the goal of packing as many New Yorkers as possible in the smallest possible number of districts in areas with traditionally high Republican enrollments,” they said.

They also noted that Congressional districts are nearly evenly populated, showing that it can be done fairly.